POLL - Penalties

[dlavery]

The practice of announcing the penalties, along with the points assessed and the team that made the violation, was used during week 1 in Richmond, and in week 2 at St Louis. The refs in St Louis took an additional step that worked very well. The referees had all worked for the week before the event to develop a set of very visible hand signals to correspond to the common violations. They also all had whistles. During a match, if a violation occured they would blow their whistle as they threw the penalty flag, and use the hand signal to indicate the violation (agressive play, human player outside the loading box, robot not in loading zone, etc.). The teams could adjust their play style during the course of the match in response, and avoid more penalties. It also helped the audience keep up with what was happening, and made the games even more fun to watch.

-dave

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by dlavery

The referees had all worked for the week before the event to develop a set of very visible hand signals to correspond to the common violations. They also all had whistles. During a match, if a violation occured they would blow their whistle as they threw the penalty flag, and use the hand signal to indicate the violation (agressive play, human player outside the loading box, robot not in loading zone, etc.).
-dave

Originally Posted by Rule 7.4

No loud music, audio systems, whistles, banging sticks, blow horns, etc.
They interfere with announcements. They prevent teams from hearing
important announcements, can be annoying, and can cause hearing loss.
Power may be shut off and/or radio/cd player, noise makers confiscated.

Looks like the referees were in violation of Rule 7.4. They should have had those whistles confiscated by the proper authorities.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Dan Swando

Looks like the referees were in violation of Rule 7.4. They should have had those whistles confiscated by the proper authorities.

They were. The Head Referee confiscated the whistle from the Assistant Referee. The Assistant Referee confiscated the whistle from the Red Line Referee. The Red Line Referee confiscated the whistle from the Blue Line Referee. The Blue Line Referee confiscated the whistle from the Blue Loading Zone Referee. The Blue Loading Zone Referee confiscated the whistle from the Red Loading Zone Referee. The Red Loading Zone Referee confiscated the whistle from the Red Human Player Referee. The Red Human Player Referee confiscated the whistle from the Blue Human Player Referee. The Blue Human Player Referee confiscated the confiscated whistle from the Head Referee. Then the Head Referee confiscated the confiscated whistle from the Assistant Referee, and the Assistant Referee confiscated the confiscated whistle from ...... (you get the idea)

-dave

[meaubry]

Steve,
For the teams involved I think it was good information. It helped explain the differences in what folks thought the score was and what it ended up being (most of the time).
I am concerned with the over emphasis on having a record of matches without a penalty. Each match is independent from the next and with so many violations that could occur (and I think I witnessed every type in Pittsburgh) making a record of 7 or 8 or 22 matches is irrelevent. Besides, the Ref's don't need the added pressure of "not calling violations in order to maintain the current penalty free match streak".
I really don't think that teams purposely go out to get penalties, The student with his toe on the line at the end of autonomous didn't do it maliciously or to gain any advantage. But, it still ended up as a Non-penalty free match.
Some loading zone violations were just bad driving and bad instructions - from the other end of the field the drivers can't really tell where they are (coaching decisions to engage in battle when near the opposing teams loading zone area are just simply bad choices - and they should be penalized as the rules state) Some of the other violations are still unfortunately "in the eyes of the beholder" - engaging high with or without intent to tip over the opponent and "high speed" ramming is subjective to the on lookers viewpoint of
"intentional" and "high speed".

The reminder at the beginning of the match of trying to be penalty free is great.

I am glad that I can say that ChiefDelphi was penalty free, and that is our #1 goal throughout the competition straight thru the Championship.

[Beth Sweet]

I like the fact that you announce who did it and what they did. It's a learning experience and if an audience member was watching that team, they can say, oh, now I get it. Especially to those of us working with rookie teams, it makes our jobs 100% easier if you announce the problem instead of making me try to describe it in "Beth-terms." Also, while all of us in the organization should, in theory, know what the penalties are and know everything about the whole entire game (yes, there was a bit of sarcasm in that), there are parents, grandparents, friends and media that are also observing our game. If part of our ambition is to expand the program and get more people to know about it, we need to make our announcements "non-FIRST person friendly." So keep making the announcements, let's make sure everyone understands what's going on!

[DarMagi]

Calling out the penalties and which team got them would be great help. At the Florida regional, they called out that a penalty was made before the scored, but did not call out the side the penalty was made until after the qualifying rounds. In most of our matches some of our alliance partners accumulated penalities, as did we, but the thing was we only were able to find out about one penalty we did, because our human player grabbed the tetra to soon to load our robot. The only reason we knew this one was because the judge told the human player when it happened. Other than that i asked the refs for a penalty break down, but i got a response of "We don't know what teams made the penalties, just the alliances." So we just did not worry about what penalties were made on our alliances. I still would like to know what penalties we got on our alliances, as being driver, this information would help me to not commit such penalties in the future as what is ramming at "high speeds" and the likes. Not that we were malicious in any of our actions, and a big sorry to team 845 cutting edge for putting you guys in the goal when you were trying to score. Anyways the good information was lacking and I think it would have been very helpful to all teams.

[Steve W]

I have emailed Blair and he will be trying to contact the other announcers to try and get standardized. Thanks for the great responses and please continue your input.

[Deetman]

As a driver, these announcements were great. Since we were able to hear them before we got off the field we knew if and what we did wrong. Luckily we only recieved one penalty that I remember at Pittsburgh, and although I had a feeling that we would be penalized, it was nice knowing right away what happened.

[sirbleedsalot]

I loved the whistles at the St. Louis regional. I did not know if the hand signals were described to the audience however. maybe there could be some kind of FAQ sheet about the game and the penalties either in the programs or on a large poster hanging up somewhere.

[roborat]

Originally Posted by Steve W

I am trying to get a general reaction to points made earlier about penalties being/not being announced. This week at Pittsburgh I had the head ref give me the penalties, team team number and penalty points for all infractions. I then announced before the score were given. What are your feelings, should this become a FIRST standard, leave it up to the regional or not do it any more?

I liked it except when they were on my team. I would have liked the refs to be more involved on practice day and tell us the penalties and maybe there would have been less on friday. It was the first regional for most teams and we did not know how the penalities were going to be called.

[NiGhtMarE_AnGeL]

i think that hearing what penalties occured in a match is a good thing, i mean if they got a penality for "no apparent" reason then they say what happened, then they, as well as the other teams, will kow what not to do next time!

[Alex357]

I think giving all the info is important. Sure, it may embarass a certain team, but that team needs to know that they did something wrong in order to try to correct it the next time.

[pyroslev]

Anouncing the penalties was a good idea. I preferred it over not knowing. It allowed us to know what we did wrong without having to filter through the video. I hope the tradition is continued.

[nightrenegade00]

announcing helps for a lot of people. it helps the scouters get info about teams and what penalties they might cause in the future. it also helps the team penalized to know what not to do next time and it helps the other teams by giving them something to look out for. keep up the announcing MCs.

-Crash

[XtremeEagle04]

THe announcments about pealtys help us coach our drivers better and help our scouting team rate the robots better, b/c you can have the best bot in the place but if your drivers keep geting penaltys for the same thing then you arn't going to get picked for the finals.